Join Brian, Mike, Dirk and Chewie as they discuss all things Magic: The Gathering. Since there are plenty of tournament and strategy podcasts out there, we've decided to focus on the fun of the game in all its many forms, from Prereleases to multiplayer free-for-alls to whatever else we can come up with. Give us a listen!

We are joined this episode by Uriah Oxford, the progenitor of the CMDR Decks video series! Why? Because he's awesome! And because we have the entirety of the Commander 2013 decks to talk about! But first, there's a bit of other news to discuss. Mike and Brian have to tell us about their latest foray into FNM, or Standard, or drafting, or whatever. It was all of the above mixed together. Then there's a new Duel Decks and Magic Online Vintage Masters.

After that, we're off into Commander previews! We're taking a hard look at each of the decks, checking out both the new awesome cards and the old awesome cards in each one. And there are some seriously awesome cards here. I mean holy crap. But that's pretty much it for the rest of the episode, so we hope you enjoy!

As if you couldn't tell from the title, we're joined this episode by former Muse, former Gathering Magic writer, former Star City Games writer, current DailyMTG writer and longtime Mana Pool listener Bruce Richard! Be sure you pronounce that all French-like, it turns out he's Canadian. But don't hold that against him, he's still completely awesome! You can follow him on Twitter @manaburned

We begin the episode by getting Bruce to give us some background. Who he is, where he came from, that sort of thing. From there we dive right into Commander previews, because heaven forbid we have any freakin' time at all between preview seasons. But at least these cards are pretty cool, if not a little wordy at times.

After an appropriate enough musical break, we've got a really fun Magic Mad Lib, followed by a brand new Story Circle! We've gotta do a Commander-style Story Circle with one of these new legendary dudes, and if you were listening closely to the previews I'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure out which one. If you want to see the full list we came up with, just click here: http://themanapool.com/the-deck-box/storycircle298edh/

It's time for another edition of Old vs. New on The Mana Pool! Finishing up the guilds in Return to Ravnica, we're hitting the old Azorius guild this time around. How do the various Isperias stack up against each other? Well they don't, because they don't go in the same category! Yeah, Chewie didn't know any better either. This one actually gave us some of our closest matches ever, along with some of our most one-sided. Yeah, the Azorius are pretty hardcore.

Also, we were short one Dirk due to his grab school work again. But rather than bring in a couple of suckers...I mean guest hosts, to replace him, we just soldiered on without him. There was a bit of talk about Mike's Launch experience, a rules update, and the usual nonsense. Hope you all enjoy!

Sadly this episode we are one Dirk short of a full cast due to grad school holding him down and beating him. But to replace him, we brought along two guest hosts! We have a half-Dirk veteran, our old buddy Bill Bloodworth (@SqueeGoblnNabob) joining us again! And the other half of Dirk is our buddy from GP Charlotte and GP Pittsburgh, JT Kohnen (@NerdPop140)! You know and love him as CyberPunkOtaku01 on the forums.

So what were we actually talking about this episode? Well of course the Prerelease results were the first thing. Everyone but Chewie is here to tell you all about how they did and what they played. Chewie missed his first Prerelease in no one knows how long, but at least Brian's sealed pool still thinks it's a Ravnica block.

After that, we had to talk about all the cards that are rotating out of Standard. It's not something that we usually talk about, but it's a tradition here on The Mana Pool! Every rotation we rant and rave about all the crap we don't have to hear about any more, and it's great! Since Bill and JT pay attention to Standard, and Mike and Brian do too, it's a really good discussion.

A moment of silence please for JT's Deadeye Navigator deck. It will be missed.